My mom had her right lobe taken out 2 days ago. Pathology says follicular carcenoma. Left side goes on Tuesday.
What are some treatment options afterwards?
It depends on the size of her nodule, but usually, a couple of weeks after surgery, she'll go hypo and have RAI, and then she'll go on meds, and eventually feel fine........this is curable, and with your support and a good attitude, she should do great.
The only "option" I can think of is to skip the RAI--not recommended, however.
On second thought, how old is your mother? If she's of advanced age skipping the RAI may be just fine. It would save her the suffering that comes with the hypo phase she'll be forced to endure prior to RAI. Since my TT was in January and the RAI was in late February, that hypo-hell is very fresh in my mind! If I were 78 and in poor health instead of 58 in excellent health I would probably refuse the RAI.
Follicular grows very very slowly and has little to no impact on anything. Mine grew silently for 10-20 years and wasn't detected until it had spread to a rib. If your mother is likely to live another 20-30 years and she's in good health, she should get the RAI, IMO. Otherwise, why put her through hypo-hell?
Here's a link to an old thread describing the progression from dx, surgery, RAI, etc. [url]http://www.healthboards.com/boards/showthread.php?p=2079285#post2079285[/url]. You have to remove the [url] from the beginning and end.
Last edited by Archie343; 04-23-2006 at 06:17 AM.
Reason: typo
I'm doing much better, thank you. I think the selenium I added about 10 days ago has made a huge difference. I've also extended the wait for breakfast from an hour to 3 or more hours. That may have helped, also.
At 65 your mother may want to skip the RAI unless the doctors get really pushy about it. Afterall, the purpose is to rid the body of any tiny remnants of the follicular thyroid tissue that are too small to diagnose. I just read on here that it takes 8 years for a lesion to grow to a size that it can be detected. That would be maybe .1 cm? And then it takes many more years for a lesion to reach a size where it might interfere with an adjacent organ. I lived with it undiagnosed for many years and was always considered to be in excellent health throughout.
Since follicular can move to the lungs an annual chest xray should be done but your mom probably gets those anyway. If it every shows up there, I'll jump as high as the doctor says, but if it shows up in a rib, again, say 10 years down the road, I'll probably just live with it.
She'll do the RAI. All this just stinks!
At least she had no trouble with her voice after the first surgery. In fact she actually can talk better with that thing out of her. I am finally okay with my voice after almost 6 months!
I am glad you are feeling better. Being very hypo sucks. I think adding selinium to my diet helped quite a bit, too. Too bad the doctors don't tell you about these things. Great that we have this support board to find out things that do help!
